Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues CD Album. Helplessness Blues. Robin Pecknold remains the ringleader of this Celtic quintet. On their second album, Fleet Foxes continue to take their music in unusual directions, creating a baroque folk-pop sound that hints at a number of influences -- Simon & Garfunkel, Fairport Convention, the Beach Boys -- but is too unique to warrant any direct links between the Seattle boys and their predecessors.

Ojala also incorporates a heady cast of guest singers. And then there is the incomparable Karen Peris of The Innocence Mission, one of Raymonde's most beloved artists, in her first collaboration outside of The Innocence Mission and solo recordings.

M. Ward knows how to live with rain. Having spent the last decade- and-a-half based in the perennially damp Portland, Oregon, the singer-songwriter and producer has learned how to shine through the soggy gloom by simply embracing its inevitability.